Golf is a globally popular sport with many enthusiasts. It is widely known as a sport that is difficult to master and there have been many training videos, apparatuses, magazines, guides, schools, etc., devoted to helping players improve their game. Crucial skill elements to a golf game include putting, chipping, pitching, and ball striking, each with their unique requirements and corresponding practice environments. Putting may be practiced on a practice green and chipping/pitching may be practiced either at a driving range or a devoted practice green with extended chipping/pitching areas. Ball striking is usually practiced at a driving range.
Practice greens for practicing putting and/or chipping usually reproduce natural lie conditions of an actual course. For example, many golf courses provide such greens that closely simulate the conditions on the courses themselves. Additionally, some golf courses provide driving ranges that reproduce the lie conditions on, say, the fairways of the courses themselves. However, maintaining such lie conditions on a driving range, particularly for high volume use, is not always practical. As such, many driving ranges, especially standalone practice facilities, provide artificial turf mats for ball striking, pitching, and/or chipping practice.
While artificial mats provide improved durability and, thus, cost reduction, they fail to accurately simulate actual game conditions in important but unobvious ways. For example, a commercial golf mat on a practice driving range is very forgiving. The golf club can hit well behind the golf ball and slide along or bounce over the surface of the mat to hit the ball, resulting in an apparently good ball flight and distance. On the other hand, on the golf course, the ground may not be similarly forgiving due to the softness or other condition of natural turf. A similar swing impacting behind the ball may cause the club head to dig into the ground or otherwise hinder inertia, resulting in a “fat shot” with reduced clubhead speed or direction and a ball flight of lesser distance, perhaps travelling only a few yards. Because the ball hit in a driving range may not show significant limitations in ball travel distance due to a “fat shot,” the golfer may not recognize that his club hit the ground behind the ball and thus the practice might not be as productive as it could be.